Old guys

Okay, the Rolling Stones just issued a new CD called A Bigger Bang. I don't care how many records Bridges to Babylon sold (it went Platinum!), this one better be a good one.

Have you noticed the commercials for the other antediluvians lately? If you stay up past midnight, you will see advertisements for new CDs by Neil Young, Paul McCartney, and Eric Clapton. It is as if the record company has to invest in television advertisement to say "hey, remember that you like these guys..."

Neil Young's commercial shows him singing something that could be on pretty much any of his albums, except Rust Never Sleeps. Eric Clapton is looking long in the tooth singing "you wanna revo-loo-SHUN!"

McCartney might be the biggest disappointment. Rule number one, never hire a producer that is 1/2 your age. Can you imagine Nigel Godrich telling McCartney how much he liked that "Say, say, say" duet with Michael Jackson?! Apparently it was this producer that said something like "play all your instruments yourself, like on that suckish album in the early seventies." What's worse, he allowed McCartney to make up for his fading voice by doubling the vocals. I hate that.

McCartney is my favorite Beatle, though. I got a lot of flack for that because Lennon was supposed to be the cool one, or something. I like John Lennon enough, but he was a poser of sorts. The boys did not make much use of their humble origins when they worked together. That just was not done in the 1960s. However, Lennon tried to push his "Working Class Hero" image in the 1970s with only one problem -- he was the only Beatle that was not working class! I have come to the conclusion that John Lennon did not really experience life, he just looked at it from the outside and wrote songs about it. (Darn good songs, most of them.) Someone would not get away with that today. Either you are "Jenny from the block," or you aren't.

Of course, McCartney's problem was that he wrote escapist lyrics, trying to get you to forget about your world and envision something entirely different, and possibly irrelevant. Imagine Lennon's horror when McCartney wanted to sing about meter maids, being 64 (is he yet?), picking rice up after a wedding, and silver hammers.

Maybe that is why I have now settled on Ringo being my favorite Beatle. He has had more solo top ten hits than Lennon or McCartney (I am not kidding). Also, if you go back and listen to those Beatles recordings, you can hear how much his drums contribute. They are not a backdrop any more than McCartney's bass. (McCartney being the real musical genius of that bunch, some of those bass lines are incredible for the mid-to-late sixties.)

--gh